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10 May 2005

Hudghton (Greens/EFA), rapporteur - Mr President, this report was not controversial in committee: it was accepted unanimously and without amendment. Therefore, you may wonder why I seek to comment on it now. That fact should not be allowed to obscure what was a very comprehensive piece of work by the Commission, making sense of a 25-year-old document that had undergone multiple revisions. It has been recast into a document of some 300 articles, which is now comprehensible and which can, therefore, be better implemented. Nothing in this requires any change of legislation in any Member State. However, it makes sure that all the accession treaty additions etc. are incorporated into one document, which is useful. As an individual who has frequently been critical of the European Commission, it is reasonable on this occasion to record our gratitude and to compliment the Commission officials who have undertaken this task and done it extremely well.